At first, I don’t know them. They’re a blur.

With Skyline now hosting sophomores as well as freshmen, I’m not sure how many students currently inhabit Pioneer, but it feels like around 2,000. I teach four sections of Creative Writing per day and I haven’t made an exact count, but that’s roughly 110 students. They veer off from the teeming mass in the hallway like zebras deserting the migrating herd and when they settle in my room, I see blond girl, blond girl, dark-haired girl, boy in sweatshirt, boy with glasses, girl with over-large back-pack, boy carrying a stringed instrument, another blond girl, boy with t-shirt with indecipherable slogan, girl with fuchsia hair, boy who looks a little like me, girl who looks angry, girl with big Calculus text book on her desk, girl with designer purse, blond boy, boy with shaved head, blond girl, blond girl, boy with braces, dark-haired girl…

They aren’t mine yet. I don’t know them and they don’t know me. I try to learn their names as quickly as possible, within two days if I can. When blond girl becomes Jessa or Laura or Miriam, she also becomes more vivid. When boy in sweatshirt becomes Lucas or Evan or Ben, he solidifies. When I know all their names, they are no longer a blur chipped from the larger mass and meshed together in my room. They are a class. My class. Slowly, they emerge from a cloudy mist and become real. When I know who they are, I begin to care how they grow.

Perhaps it’s anathema to say so, but that’s all the accountability I need. I don’t need data dissecting aggregate test scores to make me feel responsible for helping a kid learn to write well. I just need a name. When girl who looks angry becomes Sara or Nina or Brittany, I start to wonder what’s making her upset. When boy in sweatshirt becomes Bradley or Omar or Juan, I want his stories, his poems to glow.

In order to help me know their names - and also to break up the monotony of my running my mouth about policies and procedures, and to allow each student to hear his or her own voice in the room - we do several introductory activities the first few days. For instance, I ask students to tell the class who they are and what song they’d like to hear if they could tune in to a personal music listening device. And I might add something like and tell me one thing, anything, that you hope happens this year. It could be something global like you hope Congress passes comprehensive healthcare reform, or something personal, like you hope you make Varsity Baseball, or find a Homecoming date.

Going around the room and listening to 30-plus students introduce themselves can become tedious too, nearly as tedious as my mouthing policies, so I try to keep things moving. When one girl begins to ramble about what would be playing in her I-Pod - well, it’s one of two songs and I can’t decide which. They’re both kind of mashed together, like one song pushing like this and the other kind of against it, I don’t really know - I’m on the verge of saying something like, not to be rude, but we do need to pick up the pace so everyone gets a chance to speak before we run out of time, but for some reason I don’t. I don’t know what instinct holds me back from interrupting her, but thank God something does because then she says, her voice cracking - and what I hope…well…I’m pregnant and (she begins to cry a little) I just hope I can do a good job raising my son. I hope I can finish high school and go to a pretty good college so I can take care of him.

There’s no way I will forget her name now.

Not for years. Possibly, for decades.

I know who she is.

I’m responsible for her growth.

We’ve begun.